CODEWITHSUNDEEP
c++
NewLearner
NewLearner

Reputation: 153

Exactly how many primitive data types are there in C++?

I know that it might not be important to know but it's purely based on my curiosity. I've looked everywhere on the internet and every website had different numbers which was really frustrating. this website (https://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/language/types) shows 28 primitive data types for C++ while others show different numbers. Can anyone help me with this?

Upvotes: 2

Views: 3579

Answers (3)

zneak
zneak

Reputation: 138201

"Primitive data type" is not a term that the standard specifies, so you might get a different answer depending on who you ask. Clang defines the following types as "built-in", meaning that they aren't derived from any other type:

  • void
  • bool
  • std::nullptr_t
  • float
  • double
  • long double
  • char16_t
  • char32_t
  • signed and unsigned variants of:
    • char
    • wchar_t
    • short
    • int
    • long
    • long long

The list contains more, but I believe that those are the only ones that are specified in standard C++.

The standard has essentially the same thing in [basic.fundamental] (calling these "fundamental types"), but the list isn't as convenient to navigate.

That would be a total of 20 primitive types (ignoring that char and wchar_t are treated separately from their explicitly signed/unsigned variants, because their default signedness is platform-dependent).

The standard also allows implementations to have "extended" signed and unsigned integer types. For instance, Clang supports a signed and unsigned __int128_t, which would fall in that category, but it isn't required by the standard.

Upvotes: 2

Andrew Li
Andrew Li

Reputation: 1055

Primitive Data Types: These data types are built-in or predefined data types and can be used directly by the user to declare variables. example: int, char , float, bool etc.

Primitive data types available in C++ are:

  • Integer
  • Character
  • Boolean
  • Floating Point
  • Double Floating Point
  • Valueless or Void
  • Wide Character

You think that the short int and long int are primitive data types.
Those are combined with primitive data type int and data modifier short and long.

Datatype Modifiers: As the name implies, datatype modifiers are used with the built-in data types to modify the length of data that a particular data type can hold.

Data type modifiers available in C++ are:

  • Signed
  • Unsigned
  • Short
  • Long

This gives you the helpful answer.

Upvotes: 1

Darrin Cullop
Darrin Cullop

Reputation: 1208

It really depends on how you count the data types. This web site lists these 7:

  • bool
  • char
  • int
  • float
  • double
  • void
  • wchar_t

However, these types can be modified with signed, unsigned, short, long. The site that you mentioned lists all of these, plus the new ones like char16_t and char32_t. I think that the 28 listed is a very comprehensive list, and I can't think of any that have been omitted (they've even covered unsigned long long int).

So, 28 looks right to me. The reason other sites my have different numbers is because they don't include the new ones, or they don't count all of the modifiers. Other sites may consider unsigned short int different from short unsigned int, but the two are equivalent.

Upvotes: 3

Related Questions